Anguish
“Becca, I hate to tell you this but one of your girls just dropped out of school, she’s pregnant”…”The girl you have been ministering to, she was out of school last week, we sent her home because she was possessed by a demon”…”There’s no Bible at home, my parents only refer to the ancestors”…”Dear Becca, please help, I’m HIV positive”…”The women keep coming to me from the community asking for food and I don’t have any, I don’t know what to do”…”Hello, my name is Lindiwe. My parents are not working, my mother is sick. My older brother was paying for my school fees and he just lost his job. Can you help?”…”You see the teacher that just walked by, she recently gave birth to twins, and one of them just died”…”Did I tell you about my sister-in-law? She went to the doctor and they told her the baby died inside of her.”…”I can’t believe what happened to pastor…he was put in the isolation room in the mental ward”…“Two students parents just died, they have no one. The money from government went to relatives who took the money for themselves. Yes, government pays for their school fees but who pays for food? For soap to wash themselves and their clothes?”
When is it too much? All but one of these phrases I’ve heard in the last 24 hours, the other in the last week. I immediately want to run to something (unfortunately) to comfort me, to numb this. Fortunately the Lord gave me a way out of the temptation to turn to something and just allowed me to feel all of this. The best way I could describe the status of my heart was “in anguish”. You know that uncomfortable feeling that nothing can soothe? And the Lord just let me feel all of these things and I just wept and wept and yelled and beat my pillow and kicked my bag across the floor…
…He didn’t say “give money” no he said “feel this…mourn with those who mourn…I know what your heart is going through, I went through it, so much so my sweat during prayer turned to drops of blood”. I’m so tired of people dying, I’m sick of it! I’m sick of parents dying and leaving their children uncared for. I’m sick of babies dying for preventable reasons.
